Oct 8, 2012

Thought I should post about this project we did over the weekend, because the kids had a lovely time doing it, and the gift recipient (Grandma) really liked it too, so a win-win!

The making dragonflies using maple seeds and twigs appeared in Family Fun magazine a month or two ago, credited to a Shanti Nordholt. Here is the link to the originals (that also have glass bead eyes). As you can see in the picture below, we didn't do the glass bead eyes. I think we might have some somewhere in the shipping, but right now, a craft that we can do with just hot glue, paint and stuff we found on the ground on the way home is where it's at!

We had a couple of different sorts of seeds, so maybe one type was maple and one type sycamore? Not sure. We also picked up a load of twigs, and a small dead branch and a few conkers and leaves.

The conkers became the centers for the big flowers, with the sycamore seed petals hot glued around them, and the dragon fly bodies were a twig that had a natural little Y shape at the end to be the antennae. We used more twigs to make the flower stems and glued fallen leaves onto those too. We ended up cutting the lumpy seed bits off of the sycamore seeds with scissors to make gluing the wing bits onto the twigs a lot easier.

The kids painted them all up with acrylic paint. Some of them came out absolutely gorgeous, which is always an unexpected happy surprise when you've got little kids making stuff. I was kind of expecting that we might have really odd, crushed and weird looking insects and flora, but nope, it came out great.

All we did to give it to grandma was stick the twig in a glass full of rice to hold it. If you've got a vase and some proper floral glass nugget things it might look a bit classier, but given that it's made from hot gluing together stuff that fell out of trees, I think the glass of rice works just fine.

We are so making more of these, because I want one to stay in our home too! Something about it sort of reminds me of the victorian fixation with things like fire screens that hold stuffed bird displays or butterflies made out of feathers, or even the weird gluing seashells together to make freaky looking animals. I really do like it though, and because the seeds are so very thin, the light shines through them in a lovely way. It would also look much classier if it was done just in it's natural fall colours, but painting it all crazy was at least 50% of the fun.

I was very excited to see your blog pop up in my reader as I've drawn so many play ideas from your archives - thanks, the stuff you do with your kids is a huge inspiration! Can't believe how pretty the dragonflies are! I hope you're settling in back in Blighty!

Oh my goodness you ARE a wizard! This is gorgeous and so full of whimsy and FUN! I found your blog the other day through an older post (the plastic bag iron ons) I was experiencing major craft fail with my own iron on project and your post saved the day!

When my garden club comes over I am always in a panic to pick up the maple seeds. This year I will have everything ready to make Dragonflys. However each gal will need to pick up 25 seeds to make the project! Mission acomplished.

I love your post! I'm sharing the image of the dragonfly in my Friday Round-up and crediting your blog. I'm also providing links back so they can see more of your fun nature sculptures! Thank you for sharing!

I think these are beautiful, and would love to use this as a camp craft at the Idaho Botanical Garden this summer. However, I do have one question for you . . . what is a "conker"? I am not familiar with that at all! Is it another name for an acorn, or some other type of seedpod?

I'm the Editorial Assistant for Fun Family Crafts and I wanted to let you know that we have featured your autumn project! You can see it here:

http://funfamilycrafts.com/autumn-woodland-treasure-sculpture/

If you have other kid-friendly crafts, we'd love it if you would submit them. If you would like to display a featured button on your site, you can grab one from the right side bar of your post above. Thanks for a great project idea!

I came across these little dragonflies the other day and just HAD to share them on my Facebook page. They were a BIG hit! Hope you got some traffic from it :) https://www.facebook.com/CraftsbyAmanda/photos/a.353593675216.349539.323548680216/10154308903430217/?type=1

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Fangletronics

The man that I am affiliated with also has a blog. He loves to make stuff with and for our kids as well. His domain is more in the realms of electronics, but he makes other stuff too. Check out his electronic fangling over at Fangletronics.